5 Worcester Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

WORCESTER, MA — The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has selected 16,000 students from across the country as semifinalists in the 2021 program, including five from Worcester.

At the beginning of each school year, the NMSC reveals the students who will go on to compete for scholarships in the spring. About 7,600 of the original 16,000 semifinalists win scholarships.

The semifinalist round is determined by the results of the pre-SAT tests taken by about 1.5 million high school juniors nationwide during the previous school year. The list of semifinalists will be winnowed down to about 15,000 by early 2021, and those students will submit applications to get scholarships. Hundreds of students from Massachusetts were selected in the semifinalist round.

The scholarships awarded in the spring range in value, with the highest at $2,500.

The five Worcester semifinalists are:

Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science at WPI

• Toyesh Jayaswal
• Neil Kale
• Anaya Kaul
• Andrew Yang
• Akhilesh Yarlagadda